Benjamin Disraeli
21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881 Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, KG, PC, FRS, was a British Prime Minister, parliamentarian, Conservative statesman and literary figure. He served in government for forty years, twice as Prime Minister of Great Britain. He played a central role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party after the Corn Laws schism of 1846. Although he was a major figure in the protectionist wing of the Conservative Party after 1844, Disraeli's relations with other major figures in the party, particularly Lord Derby, the party leader, were often strained. From the 1860s, however, Disraeli's relationship with Derby improved and he became Derby's successor as the leader of the Conservatives. Disraeli's career from 1852 onwards was also marked by an intense rivalry with William Ewart Gladstone, who eventually rose to become leader of the Liberal Party. In this feud, Disraeli was aided by his warm friendship with Queen Victoria, who detested Gladstone. In 1876, after nearly forty years in the House of Commons, Disraeli was created Earl of Beaconsfield and moved to the House of Lords. He was a devout Anglican since his baptism at age 12, though also Britain's only prime minister of Jewish birth. Disraeli was well known as a literary and social figure, though his novels are not generally regarded as part of the Victorian literary canon. Disraeli invented the political novel, of which Sybil and Vivian Grey are perhaps the best-known today. Frances Walsh argues: :The debate about his place in the Conservative pantheon has continued since his death. Disraeli fascinated and divided contemporary opinion; he was seen by many, including some members of his own party, as an adventurer and a charlatan and by others as a far-sighted and patriotic statesman. As an actor on the political stage he played many roles Byronic hero, man of letters, social critic, parliamentary virtuoso, squire of Hughenden, royal companion, European statesman. His singular and complex personality has provided historians and biographers with a particularly stiff challenge. Benjamin Disraeli was born on 21 December 1804 at Bedford Row London. Disraeli's parents were Jews; all his grandparents and great grandparents were born in Italy, and the family arrived in England, from Venice, in 1748. He claimed his family ties to the Spanish and Portuguese congregation allowed him to claim Iberian descent. One modern historian has seen him as essentially a marrano. Glassman argues that in order to situate his status on a par with England's ruling elite, Disraeli made use of the well-established gossip of the superiority of Sephardic Jews from Iberia. He was the second child and eldest son of Isaac D'Israeli, a literary critic and historian, and Maria Basevi. Benjamin changed the spelling in the 1820s by dropping the apostrophe. His siblings included Sarah (1802–1859), Naphtali (1807), Ralph (1809–1898), and James (1813–1868). Benjamin at first attended a small school, the Reverend John Potticary's school at Blackheath. His father had Benjamin baptised in July 1817 following a dispute with their synagogue. The elder D'Israeli was content to remain outside organised religion. From 1817, Benjamin attended a school at Higham Hill, in Walthamstow, under Eliezer Cogan. His younger brothers, in contrast, attended the superior Winchester College. His father groomed him for a career in law, and Disraeli was articled to a solicitor in 1821. He worked for the firm of Swain, Stephen, Maples, Pearse and Hunt at 6, Frederick's Place, by Old Jewry, in the City of London, friends of his father, whom they advised to let him study for the Bar. However, early success in writing freed Disraeli from the necessity to pursue a career in law. In 1824, Disraeli toured Belgium and the Rhine Valley with his father and later wrote that it was while travelling on the Rhine that he decided to abandon the law: "I determined when descending those magical waters that I would not be a lawyer.". On his return to England he speculated on the stock exchange on various South American mining companies. The recognition of the new South American republics on the recommendation of George Canning had led to a considerable boom, encouraged by various promoters. In this connection, Disraeli became involved with the financier J. D. Powles, one such booster. In the course of 1825, Disraeli wrote three anonymous pamphlets for Powles, promoting the companies. That same year Disraeli's financial activities brought him into contact with the publisher John Murray who was also involved in the South American mines. Accordingly, they attempted to bring out a newspaper, The Representative, to promote both the cause of the mines and those politicians who supported the mines, specifically George Canning. The paper was a failure, in part because the mining "bubble" burst in late 1825, which ruined Powles and Disraeli. Also, according to Disraeli's biographer, Lord Blake, the paper was "atrociously edited", and would have failed regardless. Disraeli's debts incurred from this debacle haunted him for the rest of his life. Before he entered parliament, Disraeli was involved with several women, most notably Henrietta, Lady Sykes (the wife of Sir Francis Sykes, 3rd Bt), who served as the model for Henrietta Temple. It was Henrietta who introduced Disraeli to Lord Lyndhurst, with whom she later became romantically involved. As Lord Blake observed: "The true relationship between the three cannot be determined with certainty ... there can be no doubt that the affair usage damaged Disraeli and that it made its contribution, along with many other episodes, to the understandable aura of distrust which hung around his name for so many years." In 1839, he married Mary Anne Lewis, the rich widow of Wyndham Lewis, Disraeli's erstwhile colleague at Maidstone. Mary Lewis was 12 years his senior, and their union was seen as being based on financial interests, but they came to cherish one another. Disraeli turned towards literature after his financial disaster, motivated in part by a desperate need for money, and brought out his first novel, Vivian Grey, in 1826. Disraeli's biographers agree that Vivian Grey was a thinly veiled re-telling of the affair of The Representative, and it proved very popular on its release, although it also caused much offence within the Tory literary world when Disraeli's authorship was discovered. The book, initially anonymous, was purportedly written by a "man of fashion" – someone who moved in high society. Disraeli, then just twenty-three, did not move in high society, and the numerous solecisms present in his otherwise brilliant and daring work made this painfully obvious. Reviewers were sharply critical on these grounds of both the author and the book. Furthermore, John Murray believed that Disraeli had caricatured him and abused his confidence–an accusation denied at the time, and by the official biography, although subsequent biographers (notably Blake) have sided with Murray. After producing a Vindication of the English Constitution, and some political pamphlets, Disraeli followed up Vivian Grey with a series of novels, The Young Duke (1831), Contarini Fleming (1832), Alroy (1833), Venetia and Henrietta Temple (1837). During the same period he had also written The Revolutionary Epick and three burlesques, Ixion, The Infernal Marriage, and Popanilla. Of these only Henrietta Temple (based on his affair with Henrietta Sykes, wife of Sir Francis William Sykes, 3rd Bt) was a true success.During the 1840s Disraeli wrote three political novels collectively known as "the Trilogy"–Sybil, Coningsby, and Tancred. Disraeli's relationships with other male writers of his period were strained or non-existent. After the disaster of The Representative, John Gibson Lockhart became a bitter enemy and the two never reconciled. Disraeli's preference for female company prevented the development of contact with those who were otherwise not alienated by his opinions, comportment or background. One contemporary who tried to bridge the gap, William Makepeace Thackeray, established a tentative cordial relationship in the late 1840s only to see everything collapse when Disraeli took offence at a burlesque of him which Thackeray penned for Punch. Disraeli took revenge in Endymion (published in 1880), when he caricatured Thackeray as "St. Barbe". Disraeli's writing is considered generally interesting: his books teem with striking thoughts, shrewd maxims, and brilliant phrases which stick in the memory; on the other hand, he is often considered artificial, extravagant, and turgid. Critic William Kuhn argued that much of his fiction can be read as "the memoirs he never wrote", revealing the inner life of a politician for whom the norms of Victorian public life appeared to represent a social straitjacket – particularly with regard to his allegedly "ambiguous sexuality." Disraeli had been considering a political career as early as 1830, before he departed England for the Mediterranean. His first real efforts, however, did not come until 1832, during the great crisis over the Reform Bill, when he contributed to an anti-Whig pamphlet edited by John Wilson Croker and published by Murray entitled England and France: or a cure for Ministerial Gallomania. The choice of a Tory publication was regarded as odd by Disraeli's friends and relatives, who thought him more of a Radical. Indeed, Disraeli had objected to Murray about Croker inserting "high Tory" sentiment, writing that "it is quite impossible that anything adverse to the general measure of Reform can issue from my pen." Further, at the time Gallomania was published, Disraeli was in fact electioneering in High Wycombe in the Radical interest. Disraeli's politics at the time were influenced both by his rebellious streak and by his desire to make his mark. In the early 1830s the Tories and the interests they represented appeared to be a lost cause. The other great party, the Whigs, was anathema to Disraeli: "Toryism is worn out and I cannot condescend to be a Whig." Though he initially stood for election, unsuccessfully, as a Radical, Disraeli was a Tory by the time he won a seat in the House of Commons in 1837 representing the constituency of Maidstone. He gained nominations to contest progressively safer seats at two subsequent General Elections and was in both cases elected, for Shrewsbury in 1841 (despite serious opposition, and financial difficulties which opponents seized on), and then for Buckinghamshire county in 1847. Although a Conservative, Disraeli was sympathetic to some of the demands of the Chartists and argued for an alliance between the landed aristocracy and the working class against the increasing power of the merchants and new industrialists in the middle class, helping to found the Young England group in 1842 to promote the view that the landed interests should use their power to protect the poor from exploitation by middle-class businessmen. During the twenty years between the Corn Laws and the Second Reform Bill Disraeli hoped to forge a Tory-Radical alliance, to little avail. Prior to the 1867 Reform Bill the working class did not possess the vote and therefore had little tangible political power. Although Disraeli forged a personal friendship with John Bright, a Lancashire manufacturer and leading Radical, Disraeli was unable to convince Bright to sacrifice principle for political gain. After one such attempt, Bright noted in his diary that Disraeli "seems unable to comprehend the morality of our political course." Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel passed over Disraeli when putting together his government in 1841 and Disraeli, hurt, gradually became a sharp critic of Peel's government, often deliberately adopting positions contrary to those of his nominal chief. The best known of these cases were the Maynooth grant in 1845 and the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. The end of 1845 and the first months of 1846 were dominated by a battle in parliament between the free traders and the protectionists over the repeal of the Corn Laws, with the latter rallying around Disraeli and Lord George Bentinck. An alliance of pro free-trade Conservatives (the "Peelites"), Radicals, and Whigs carried repeal, and the Conservative Party split: the Peelites moved towards the Whigs, while a "new" Conservative Party formed around the protectionists, led by Disraeli, Bentinck, and Lord Stanley (later Lord Derby).The context of the fight over free trade was famine in Ireland, which Peel hoped might be remedied by importation of grain. The term "corn" in the context of the Corn Laws refers to wheat, used in making bread. Because nearly every family made bread for its own consumption, wheat was the main staple of the average diet in Britain. Accordingly, the price of wheat had a profound effect on the cost of living of the ordinary family. Repeal of the Corn Laws would remove the tariffs on imported wheat and reduce the price of wheat and bread for the average and poor citizens of Britain. Immediately, Peel hoped that the repeal of the tariff on wheat (the Corn Laws) and the resultant influx of cheaper wheat into Britain would remedy the suffering caused by the Great Famine in Ireland due to the successive failure of potato crops. The split in the Tory/Conservative party over the repeal of the Corn Laws had profound implications for Disraeli's political career: almost every Conservative politician with official experience followed Peel, leaving the rump bereft of leadership. As one biographer wrote, "Disraeli found himself almost the only figure on his side capable of putting up the oratorical display essential for a parliamentary leader." Looking on from the House of Lords, the Duke of Argyll wrote that Disraeli "was like a subaltern in a great battle where every superior officer was killed or wounded." If the remainder of the Conservative Party could muster the electoral support necessary to form a government, then Disraeli now seemed to be guaranteed high office. However, he would take office with a group of men who possessed little or no official experience, who had rarely felt moved to speak in the House of Commons before, and who, as a group, remained hostile to Disraeli on a personal level, his defense of the Corn Laws notwithstanding. In 1847 a small political crisis occurred which removed Bentinck from the leadership and highlighted Disraeli's differences with his own party. In the preceding general election, Lionel de Rothschild had been returned for the City of London. Members of Parliament were required to swear an oath "on the true faith of a Christian." Rothschild, an unconverted Jew, could not do so and therefore could not take his seat. Lord John Russell, the Whig leader who had succeeded Peel as Prime Minister and like Rothschild a member for the City of London, introduced the Jews Relief Act 1858 to amend the oath and permit Jews to enter Parliament. Disraeli spoke in favour of the measure, arguing that Christianity was "completed Judaism," and asking of the House of Commons "Where is your Christianity if you do not believe in their Judaism?" While Disraeli did not argue that the Jews did the Christians a favour by killing Christ, as he had in Tancred and would in Lord George Bentinck, his speech was badly received by his own party, which along with the Anglican establishment was hostile to the bill. Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford and a friend of Disraeli's, spoke strongly against the measure and implied that Russell was paying off the Jews for "helping" elect him. Every member of the future protectionist cabinet then in parliament (except Disraeli) voted against the measure. One member who was not, Lord John Manners, stood against Rothschild when the latter re-submitted himself for election in 1849. Bentinck, then still Conservative leader in the Commons, joined Disraeli in speaking and voting for the bill, although his own speech was a standard one of toleration. In the aftermath of the debate Bentinck resigned the leadership and feuded with Stanley, leader of the protectionist Tories in the Lords and overall, who had opposed the measure and directed the party whips in the Commons to oppose the measure as well. Bentinck was succeeded by Lord Granby; Disraeli's own speech, thought by many of his own party to be blasphemous, ruled him out for the time being. Even as these intrigues played out, Disraeli was working with the Bentinck family to secure the necessary financing to purchase Hughenden Manor, in Buckinghamshire. This purchase allowed him to stand for the county, which was "essential" if one was to lead the Conservative Party at the time. He and Mary Anne alternated between Hughenden and several homes in London for the remainder of their marriage. These negotiations were complicated by the sudden death of Lord George on 21 September 1848, but Disraeli obtained a loan of £25,000 (equivalent to about £1.96 million as of 2013) from Lord George's brothers Lord Henry Bentinck and Lord Titchfield. Within a month Granby resigned the leadership in the commons, feeling himself inadequate to the post, and the party functioned without an actual leader in the commons for the remainder of the parliamentary session. At the start of the next session, affairs were handled by a triumvirate of Granby, Disraeli, and John Charles Herries–indicative of the tension between Disraeli and the rest of the party, who needed his talents but mistrusted the man. This confused arrangement ended with Granby's resignation in 1851; Disraeli effectively ignored the two men regardless. The first opportunity for the protectionist Tories under Disraeli and Stanley to take office came in 1851, when Lord John Russell's government was defeated in the House of Commons over the Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1851. Disraeli was to have been Home Secretary, with Stanley (becoming the Earl of Derby later that year) as Prime Minister. Other possible ministers included Sir Robert Inglis, Henry Goulburn, John Charles Herries, and Lord Ellenborough. The Peelites, however, refused to serve under Stanley or with Disraeli so long as the question of free trade remained unsettled, and attempts to form a purely protectionist government failed. Derby supposedly remarked at the time, "Pshaw! These are not names which I can put before the Queen!" Russell resumed office, but resigned again in early 1852 when a combination of the protectionists and Lord Palmerston defeated him on a Militia Bill. This time Lord Derby (as he had become) took office, and to general surprise appointed Disraeli Chancellor of the Exchequer: the expectation had been that Disraeli would assume the Foreign or Home offices. Disraeli offered to stand aside as leader in the House of Commons in favour of Palmerston, but the latter declined. The primary responsibility of a mid-Victorian chancellor was to produce a Budget for the coming fiscal year. Disraeli proposed to reduce taxes on malt and tea (indirect taxation); additional revenue would come from an increase in the house tax. More controversially, Disraeli also proposed to alter the workings of the income tax (direct taxation) by "differentiating"–i.e., different rates would be levied on different types of income. As noted above, Disraeli had unsuccessfully opposed the repeal of the Corn Laws in June 1846. Repeal of the Corn Laws had removed the tariffs on the importation of cheap cereal grains into Britain. Thus the price of wheat had fallen. Farmers now received less income from the sale of their wheat. However, landlords did not adjust the rents they were charging for land rented to farmers for growing wheat or "corn". Thus the farmers were placed in a disadvantageous economic position. Disraeli sought to alleviate this disadvantage by differentially raising income tax rates against non-farmers and lowering income taxes for the farmers. This, Disraeli felt, would allow the landed aristocracy and gentry to continue to collect the same rent and would compensate the farmers for their lost income. The budget was viewed by many Whigs as "compensation to the landlords;" and viewed by some as "a compensation with a revenge" against those who had obtained repeal of the Corn Laws. The establishment of the income tax on a permanent basis had been the subject of much inter-party discussion since the fall of Peel's ministry in June 1846. Since that time, no consensus had yet been reached, and Disraeli was criticised for mixing up details over the different "schedules" of income. Disraeli's proposal to extend the tax to Ireland gained him further enemies, and he was also hampered by an unexpected increase in defence expenditure, which was forced on him by Derby and Sir John Pakington (Secretary of State for War and the Colonies) (leading to his celebrated remark to John Bright about the "damned defences"). This, combined with bad timing and perceived inexperience led to the failure of the Budget and consequently the fall of the government on 17 December 1852. Gladstone's final speech on the failed Budget marked the beginning of over twenty years of mutual parliamentary hostility, as well as the end of Gladstone's formal association with the Conservative Party. Disraeli offered certain concessions to the "free traders" in order to broaden the support for the Conservative Party. This position brought him unpopularity with the "protectionists" of his own party. Because of the split in the Conservative Party and because of Disraeli's unpopularity, arising from the budget contest of 1852, no Conservative reconciliation remained possible so long as Disraeli remained leader in the House of Commons. With the fall of the government, Disraeli and the Conservatives returned to the opposition benches. Derby's successor as Prime Minister was the Peelite Lord Aberdeen, whose ministry was composed of both Peelites and Whigs. Disraeli himself was succeeded as chancellor by Gladstone. Lord Palmerston's first administration collapsed in 1858 amid public fallout over the Orsini affair and Derby took office at the head of a purely 'Conservative' administration. He again offered a place to Gladstone, who declined. Disraeli remained leader of the House of Commons and returned to the Exchequer. As in 1852, Derby led a minority government, dependent on the division of its opponents for survival. The government's principal measure for the 1858 session involved re-organising the governance of India, the Indian Mutiny having exposed the inadequacy of dual control. The President of the Board of Control, Lord Ellenborough, who had previously served as Governor-General of India (1841–44) drafted the first attempt at legislation. This bill, however, was riddled with complexities and had to be withdrawn. Soon after, Ellenborough was forced to resign over an entirely separate matter involving the current Governor-General, Lord Canning. Faced with a vacancy, Disraeli and Derby tried yet again to bring Gladstone into the government. Disraeli wrote a personal letter to Gladstone, asking him to place the good of the party above personal animosity: "Every man performs his office, and there is a Power, greater than ourselves, that disposes of all this..." In responding to Disraeli Gladstone denied that personal feelings played any role in his decision then and previously to accept office, while acknowledging that there were differences between him and Derby "broader than you may have supposed". Gladstone also hinted at the strength of his own faith, and the role it played in his public life, when he addressed Disraeli's most personal and private appeal: :I state these points fearlessly and without reserve, for you have yourself well reminded me that there is a Power beyond us that disposes of what we are and do, and I find the limits of choice in public life to be very narrow. — W. E. Gladstone to Disraeli, 1858 With Gladstone's refusal, Derby and Disraeli looked elsewhere and settled on Disraeli's old friend Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who became Secretary of State for the Colonies; Derby's son Lord Stanley, succeeded Ellenborough at the Board of Control. Stanley, with Disraeli's assistance, proposed and guided the India Act through the House of Commons. This Act formed the basis for governance for the subcontinent for the next sixty years, the East India Company and its Governor-General being replaced by a viceroy and the Indian Council, while at Westminster the Board of Control was abolished and its functions were assumed by the newly created India Office, under the Secretary of State for India. After engineering the defeat of a Liberal Reform Bill introduced by Gladstone in 1866, Disraeli and Derby introduced their own measure in 1867. This was primarily a political strategy designed to give the Conservative party control of the reform process and the subsequent long-term benefits in the Commons, similar to those derived by the Whigs after their 1832 Reform Act. It was thought that if the Conservatives were able to secure this piece of legislation, then the newly enfranchised electorate might show its gratitude to the Tories in the form of a Conservative vote at the next general election, improving their chances of forming a majority government. The Reform Act 1867 extended the franchise by 938,427 – an increase of 88% – by giving the vote to male householders and male lodgers paying at least 10 pounds for rooms and eliminating rotten boroughs with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants, and granting constituencies to fifteen unrepresented towns, and extra representation in parliament to larger towns such as Liverpool and Manchester, which had previously been under-represented in Parliament. This act was unpopular with the right wing of the Conservative Party, most notably Lord Cranborne (later the Marquess of Salisbury), who resigned from the government and spoke against the bill, accusing Disraeli of "a political betrayal which has no parallel in our Parliamentary annals." Cranborne, however, was unable to lead an effective rebellion against Derby and Disraeli, who retained power. Derby's health had been declining for some time and he finally resigned as Prime Minister in late February 1868 (he lived another twenty months). Disraeli's efforts over the past two years had dispelled doubts about him succeeding Derby as leader of the Conservative Party and he therefore became Prime Minister. As Disraeli remarked, "I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole." The Conservatives remained a minority in the House of Commons and the passage of the Reform Bill required the calling of new election once the new voting register had been compiled. Disraeli's term as Prime Minister would therefore be short unless the Conservatives won the general election. He made only two major changes in the cabinet: he replaced Lord Chelmsford as Lord Chancellor with Lord Cairns, and brought in George Ward Hunt as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Disraeli and Chelmsford had never got along particularly well, and Cairns, in Disraeli's view, was a far stronger minister. Disraeli's first premiership was dominated by the heated debate over the established Church of Ireland. Although Ireland was overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, the Protestant Church remained the established church and was funded by direct taxation. An initial attempt by Disraeli to negotiate with Cardinal Manning the establishment of a Roman Catholic university in Dublin foundered in March when Gladstone moved resolutions to disestablish the Irish Church altogether. The proposal united the Liberals under Gladstone's leadership, while causing divisions among the Conservatives. While Disraeli's government survived until the December general election, the political initiative had passed to the Liberals, who were returned to power with a majority of 170. After six years in opposition, Disraeli and the Conservative Party won the election of 1874, giving the party its first absolute majority in the House of Commons since the 1840s. Under the stewardship of Richard Assheton Cross, the Home Secretary, Disraeli's new government enacted many reforms, including the Artisan's and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement Act 1875, the Public Health Act 1875, the Sale of Food and Drugs Act (1875), and the Education Act (1876). His government also introduced a new Factory Act meant to protect workers, the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875, which allowed peaceful picketing, and the Employers and Workmen Act (1875) to enable workers to sue employers in the civil courts if they broke legal contracts. As a result of these social reforms the Liberal-Labour MP Alexander Macdonald told his constituents in 1879, "The Conservative party have done more for the working classes in five years than the Liberals have in fifty." Disraeli cultivated a public image of himself as an Imperialist with grand gestures such as conferring on Queen Victoria the title “Empress of India”. Disraeli's foreign policy in the 1870s came under attack by Liberals for being "imperialist." He sought to expand and develop the British Empire in the Middle East and Central Asia. In spite of the objections of his own cabinet and without Parliament's consent, in 1875 he obtained a short-term loan from Lionel de Rothschild in order to purchase 44% of the shares of the Suez Canal Company. Before this action, though, he had for the most part opted to continue the Whig policy of limited expansion, preferring to maintain the then-current borders as opposed to promoting expansion. Disraeli and Gladstone clashed over Britain's Balkan policy. Disraeli saw the situation as a matter of British imperial and strategic interests, keeping to Palmerston's policy of supporting the Ottoman Empire against Russian expansion. According to Blake, Disraeli believed in upholding Britain's greatness through a tough, "no nonsense" foreign policy that put Britain's interests above the "moral law" that advocated emancipation of small nations. Gladstone, however, saw the issue in moral terms: the Turks had massacred Bulgarian Christians and Gladstone therefore believed it was immoral to support the Ottoman Empire. Blake further argued that Disraeli's imperialism "decisively orientated the Conservative party for many years to come, and the tradition which he started was probably a bigger electoral asset in winning working-class support during the last quarter of the century than anything else". A leading proponent of the Great Game, Disraeli introduced the Royal Titles Act 1876, which created Queen Victoria Empress of India, putting her at the same level as the Russian Tsar. In his private correspondence with the Queen, he proposed "to clear Central Asia of Muscovites and drive them into the Caspian". In order to contain Russia's influence, he launched an invasion of Afghanistan and signed the Cyprus Convention with the Ottoman Empire, whereby this strategically placed island was handed over to Britain. Disraeli scored another diplomatic success at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, in preventing Bulgaria from gaining full independence, limiting the growing influence of Russia in the Balkans and breaking up the League of the Three Emperors. However, difficulties in South Africa (epitomised by the defeat of the British Army at the Battle of Isandlwana), as well as Afghanistan, weakened his government and led to his party's defeat in the 1880 election. Disraeli was elevated to the House of Lords in 1876 when Queen Victoria made him Earl of Beaconsfield and Viscount Hughenden. In the general election of 1880 Disraeli's Conservatives were defeated by Gladstone's Liberals, in large part owing to the uneven course of the Second Anglo-Afghan War. The Irish Home Rule vote in England contributed to his party's defeat. Disraeli died in April 1881. He is buried in a vault beneath the Church of St Michael and All Angels which stands in the grounds of his home Hughenden Manor, accessed from the churchyard. There is also a memorial to Disraeli in the chancel in the church, erected in his honour by Queen Victoria. His literary executor, and for all intents and purposes his heir, was his private secretary, Lord Rowton. The Disraeli vault also contains the body of Sarah Brydges Willyams, the wife of James Brydges Willyams of St Mawgan in Cornwall. Her wish to be buried there was granted after she left an estate sworn at under £40,000, of which Disraeli received over £30,000. Disraeli has a memorial in Westminster Abbey. He is also remembered with a large statue in the market town of Ormskirk where he graces the centre of this town. Although born of Jewish parents, Disraeli was baptised in the Christian faith at the age of twelve, and remained an observant Anglican for the rest of his life. Adam Kirsch, in his biography of Disraeli, states that his Jewishness was "both the greatest obstacle to his ambition and its greatest engine." Much of the criticism of his policies was couched in anti-Semitic terms. He was depicted in some antisemitic political cartoons with a big nose and curly black hair, called "Shylock" and "abominable Jew," and portrayed in the act of ritually murdering the infant Britannia. One apocryphal story states that Disraeli reconverted to Judaism on his deathbed. Disraeli's Jewish origins were also a factor in an extraordinary and celebrated exchange of invective in 1835. The Irish MP Daniel O'Connell (ironically, a prominent supporter of Jewish rights), thinking himself to have been slandered by Disraeli, referred to the latter as: :a reptile... just fit now, after being twice discarded by the people, to become a Conservative. He possesses all the necessary requisites of perfidy, selfishness, depravity, want of principle, etc., which would qualify him for the change. His name shows that he is of Jewish origin. I do not use it as a term of reproach; there are many most respectable Jews. But there are, as in every other people, some of the lowest and most disgusting grade of moral turpitude; and of those I look upon Mr. Disraeli as the worst. He has just the qualities of the impenitent thief on the Cross, and I verily believe, if Mr. Disraeli's family herald were to be examined and his genealogy traced, the same personage would be discovered to be the heir at law of the exalted individual to whom I allude. I forgive Mr. Disraeli now, and as the lineal descendant of the blasphemous robber, who ended his career besides the Founder of the Christian Faith, I leave the gentleman to the enjoyment of his infamous distinction and family honours. Disraeli, in his extensive public responses to O'Connell, included a demand for a duel with O'Connell's son (which resulted in Disraeli's temporary detention by the authorities), a reference to "the inextinguishable hatred with which he shall pursue O'Connell's existence", and the accusation that O'Connell's supporters had a "princely revenue wrung from a starving race of fanatical slaves". Disraeli also stated, in a now oft-quoted reply, "Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the Right Honourable Gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the Temple of Solomon." Disraeli was very proud of his conduct in this celebrated exchange. "I have squabashed them", he wrote to his sister even before the affair had died down, and later, in his diary, he wrote of the "Row with O'Connell in which I greatly distinguish myself".